1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to the field of computer systems. More specifically, the present invention relates to the conservation of power consumption in a computer system.
2. Description of the Related Art
As more systems become portable, increased reliance will necessarily be placed on portable power supplies, particularly batteries. Reducing power consumption by processors becomes increasingly important as the industry moves to maximize battery life. Even in stationary systems, excessive power consumption translates into higher operational costs. Additionally, increasingly stringent governmental requirements and environmental standards militate toward reducing the power consumed in a computer system where possible.
With increasing clock frequencies for each new processor generation, the power consumption for such processor goes up as the speed of the clock increases. Accordingly, when a processor consumes a large amount of power, the temperature of the processor increases. As the temperature of the processor increases, the reliability of the processor decreases. Furthermore, in order to optimize the output of a high performance processor, high performance co-processors such as memory control hub should also be employed. Consequently, a high performance system using fast processor typically consumes a large amount of power.
However, many word processor applications, for example, do not require the system to operate at full power because a typical word processor would not be able to use all the resources or power that a typical high performance processor provides. Accordingly, it is not necessary to keep a high performance system at full power because running at full power not only reduces the battery life time, but also effects overall system reliability.
xe2x80x9cIn the past, an approach of advanced configuration and power interface (xe2x80x9cACPIxe2x80x9d) has been used to reduce power consumption in a system. However, ACPI has never been applied in a system using RDRAM (Rambus(trademark) Dynamic Random Access Memory) or similar DRAM (Dynamic Random Access Memory) based systems.xe2x80x9d